Deafening Silence
by Esther Kirkland
Summary: "Three weeks. Statistics said that after twenty-four hours, hope of a kidnap victim returning unscathed dropped fifty percent. After a week, chances were down to one percent [...] Sherlock had retraced John's steps himself [...] Nothing — no witnesses, no clues. John hadn't even made it to the store."
1. Chapter 1

Three weeks.

Statistics said that after twenty-four hours, hope of a kidnap victim returning unscathed dropped fifty percent. After a week, chances were down to one percent.

Three weeks?

Sherlock shook his head, clasped his dry hands behind his back, and resumed pacing. He wasn't sure how long he had stood, staring out the window without actually seeing anything in the bustling street beyond.

Three weeks. More than 500 hours since John had strolled out of the flat, shouting for Sherlock to text if he needed anything from the store, and never returned. Over three thousand minutes. Two million heartbeats.

And still — nothing.

No ransom note. No phone call. Nothing.

Sherlock had retraced John's steps himself, looking for something the police couldn't see, wouldn't spot, might have missed. Nothing — no witnesses, no clues. John hadn't even made it to the store.

Even Mycroft, with his nearly-omniscient watch over the great city of London, hadn't been able to help. John had vanished in a large blind spot.

Sherlock ran a hand through his hair. "_Think_," he growled to himself. He couldn't help the images that flashed through his mind of half-decomposed corpses, discovered along river banks and hidden in parks or abandoned buildings. He knew the odds.

He also knew that he had to beat the odds. He couldn't accept that John had simply disappeared, simply becoming another cold case in the back storage rooms of Scotland Yard.

He couldn't accept that for a moment — because if he did, it might come true.

His phone chirped, and he lunged for it.

"Hello?"

"Sherlock." Lestrade's voice was clipped. "We found him."

Sherlock's eyes closed, and his heart sank. He swallowed down bile, forcing the words out: "Where?" He would have to identify the body.

"Empty apartment near Tower Hamlets. A neighbor saw him through a window."

Sherlock sank into his chair. His throat was too dry to swallow. His hand, limp, drooped the phone away from his ear, Lestrade's voice becoming a tinny whisper that couldn't seep through the fog.

"Sherlock?" the DI was calling. "Sherlock—we need you to come down to the station."

Robotically, Sherlock lifted the phone. "Do you have any leads on the killer?"

There was a short silence on the other end.

"Oh, mother of—" Lestrade's voice was a groan. "Sherlock—there is no killer. I'm sorry, I thought you understood."

"What do you mean?"

"He's alive, you bloody idiot!"

Sherlock sat, unresponsive for a long second.

"What?"

"He's alive—but he won't talk to us."

Sherlock surged out of the chair. "He's alive? John is alive?"

"Yes, you great—listen, would you please just come down to the station? We can't get a word out of him and—"

Sherlock shoved the phone into his pocket, and was out the door before his coat was even around his shoulders.

"Mrs. Hudson!" he bellowed, galloping down the stairs. "Mrs. Hudson!"

She tripped out of her apartment and looked up at him, her hand over her heart.

"They've found him," Sherlock said, gripping her shoulders. "He's alive."

"Oh, thank God in Heaven," the elderly woman gasped.

"I have to get down to the Yard." He kissed her weathered cheek. "Don't wait up."

"As if I could do anything else," she scoffed. "Call me, please."

"Will do."

And with a whirl of his coat, he swept out the door.

"_Taxi!"_

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**A/N: **_Hey, folks. Sorry it's been so long since I updated anything. Time of Echoes is driving me nuts, because as much as I'd like to work on it, I don't have an end goal in mind and I'm not exactly sure what I'm writing towards. That one may end up not getting updated again until after Series Three premiers, so...sorry there._

_Anyway, this is just a little something that I put together in about twenty minutes tonight, inspired by an episode of The Mentalist, of all things. There will be at least one more part, but if anyone seems interested, I may make it longer. We'll see. :D Anyway, please drop me a line to tell me what you think. Reviews are my fountains of happy dancing. :)_

_~Essie_


	2. Chapter 2

The sounds of Scotland Yard's offices were familiar to Sherlock—clacking keyboards, ringing phones, the chatter of various voices issuing orders or just catching up on last night's game, the _pop-hiss_ of a coffee machine spluttering out the start of a new batch of tar… He had been here a thousand times, had processed every sound-wave. He knew the sounds of this building as well as he knew those of his own home.

There was a sound missing, though. A hole in the matted, felt-like surface of white noise as Sherlock walked down the long hall that led to the holding room where John waited. A sound that Sherlock had only, in the past few months, been able to add into the mix: that of John's footsteps echoing his own. Somewhat shorter and quicker, given John's lesser height, with a military precision and a touch of the medical soft-step, a blend of the institutional and the martial. And today, for the first time in a very long while, it was missing.

Sherlock tried to push his uneasiness aside as he followed Lestrade down the hall, focusing on the fact that John was alive, he was unharmed—or else they'd be at the hospital, of course—and he would soon be following Sherlock all over England again. The missing footsteps would return.

An image from childhood, long buried in Sherlock's mental maze, reared its shaggy head. Peter Pan would regain his shadow.

"He's right in there," Lestrade said, gesturing with one hand. "And Sherlock…" his voice trailed off.

"Yes, Lestrade?" Sherlock snapped. He reached for the door handle, only to be stopped by the detective inspector's firm hand on his wrist. He looked at Lestrade's grey face. _Too little sleep recently. Should cut back on the coffee. Migraine coming on. Ex-wife is asking for money again._

"Be gentle."

Sherlock furrowed his brows, but Lestrade said no more, releasing him and stepping back.

The doorknob in his hand suddenly felt cold, as if there were a wall of ice on the other side. Sherlock twisted it, and pushed the door open.

"John?"

There he was. Sherlock swept into the room, his eyes scanning John's wrinkled, gaunt frame with the precision of an electronic device, cataloguing every scrape—_three, one to the left temple, two on the right wrist_—bruise—_one, left eye_—and sign of harsh treatment—_wrinkled clothes, he's slept in them, if he's slept at all. Gaunt cheeks, little to no real nourishment, but no need of emergency fluids. Grey skin tone…Why is he not speaking?_

"John. John, can you hear me?"

John Watson, his blonde hair at least three shades greyer than when last Sherlock saw him, said nothing. Didn't even move. He sat bolt upright in his seat before the table that sat in the center of the room, staring in front of him with a blank-eyed gaze that didn't even seem to register that Sherlock was in the room.

"John?" Sherlock bent over to meet John's gaze. It was as though he wasn't even there. He touched his flatmate's shoulder. "John. You're safe. Wake up—are you alright?"

No response.

Puzzled, and with the buzzing edge of fear tingling at the corners of his mind, Sherlock examined John more closely. His breathing was normal, as was his heart rate. Pupil dilation was acceptable, if a bit sluggish. No indication of drugs or alcohol…

"Lestrade." Sherlock pulled the door back open, his eyes never leaving his eerily-still friend. "Get in here."

DI Lestrade stepped inside the small room and pushed the door shut behind him with a sigh. "No change, then."

"You knew he was like this?"

"I'd hoped seeing you might…snap him out of it." The detective inspector shrugged his shoulders. "We don't know what's wrong. He was like that when we found him."

"Does he respond to anything?"

"He will be led; he makes no resistance to that. But he never talks, never smiles…he blinks. That's about it."

Sherlock knelt beside his friend, laying a hand on John's jumper-clad arm. "Something is wrong," he said, knowing that he merely stated the obvious but unable to think of anything else. "Post-traumatic stress? He has a history."

"It seems likely. But we don't know why, or how to…" Lestrade waved a helpless hand "…how to _wake him up_, for lack of a better word."

Sherlock stared into John's dead eyes, watching the army doctor blink mechanically.

"I'm taking him home."

"By all rights, he ought to go to a hospital," Lestrade protested. "I've already called over for them."

"Your medical personnel examined him?"

"Yes…"

"And?"

Lestrade shoved his hands into his pockets. "They say there's nothing _physically_ wrong with him. But he should still—"

"I'm taking him home, Lestrade."

There was no arguing with that tone of voice. Sherlock took John's arm and helped him to stand. The shorter man obeyed without emotion, lifeless as a robot. Lestrade watched as Sherlock led him out into the hall and then toward the outer door, Sherlock holding John's elbow in one hand, with his other arm—clad in that great black coat as always—wrapped around the shorter man's shoulders in a gesture that was both practical and protective.

Two sets of footsteps tapped down the hall, but the sound was still not right.

No, it wasn't right at all.


	3. Chapter 3

Mrs. Hudson made them tea.

John wouldn't drink.

Well… He _would _drink, but only if Mrs. Hudson held the lukewarm liquid to his lips. Like a baby.

Sherlock paced.

Mrs. Hudson brought up takeaway.

John ate—but only when she held it to his lips. It was like a mother and an infant.

Sherlock cursed.

Mrs. Hudson led John upstairs to bed.

Sherlock stood in the doorway, watching with narrowed eyes as their landlady tucked the covers over the nonresponsive John.

Then he went down to the kitchen, put a culture dish under his microscope, and stared through the lens into the tiny world of gem hues and simple, predictable microbes.

"He won't close his eyes," Mrs. Hudson worried, coming into the kitchen and wringing her hands. She began to tidy the counter, dropping dishes into the sink to wash. "He just stares at the ceiling, Sherlock, just blinking."

Sherlock didn't look up from his microscope. He watched an amoeba writhe itself across the white space.

"Sherlock?"

"Mmm…Busy."

She gasped in indignation. "Sherlock! It's John—our John, and he's—"

He finally looked up, his brilliant eyes shooting like laser beams across the small room and skewering Mrs. Hudson's words into silence.

"I'm busy," he said. "Thinking."

Mrs. Hudson had known Sherlock a long time. Longer than anyone but Mycroft, and better than anyone but John. She took in an understanding breath. "Ah," she said, relieved. "Thinking." About John, she meant. Solving the problem—the only way he knew how. She'd take care of the physical, Lestrade the legal… It was up to Sherlock to solve the mental.

"Well," she said. "Then I'll leave you to it."

But Sherlock was already gone again, lost in the world of the amoeba while his mind rifled through the filing cabinets of memory, comparing elements and cross-referencing sources.

He knew the "when" and the "where". Now he had three questions:

How. Who.

And one more: Why?


	4. Chapter 4

_Heat._

_Nothing but sand and sun and a heat-bleached sky in every direction. Endless dunes — he'd left even the straggling scrub brush behind long ago._

_He'd kill for a drink of water._

_If he tuned around, he could find his way back._

_He was certain._

_Mostly._

_He shook sand out of the folds in his head-cloth and moved on, his feet sinking deep into the hot sand. It didn't matter if he could find his way back or not. He didn't know if it was safe or not._

_He couldn't go back until he was sure._

_And, to be perfectly honest—which, when you're dying of thirst in an unending desert and may never regain civilization, is something you have to be with yourself—he was curious. He had never realized that there was so much beyond the village and the base camp. Not that he'd explored much—he mostly used this place as an antidote to boredom when he was lying in bed at night, waiting for sleep to come. It had started as an experiment, when Sherlock had first explained the concept of a mind pa—_

_Nope._

_Not going there. Probably isn't safe._

_Not that he had much left to protect._

_Night fell on the desert with the suddenness of a light flicking off, and he crested a dune to see his camp waiting at the bottom._

_With a sigh, he crawled into the low tent and flicked the radio on, taking comfort in the soft, rhythmic noises it made. No music, no talk shows, just a quiet, repeating tone._

_Bip. Bip. Bip._

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

_Bip. Bip. Bip._

_He slept._

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_Hey. Sorry for the long delay on posting. I had this bit written on a scrap of notebook paper that got LOST and I was determined to find it and post EXACTLY what I had written... Anyway. We should be getting back on track now. _

_Also, several of you have commented on Time of Echoes recently, begging for an update. *Sigh* I'm thinking about it. :D I really love it, but series four is not looking like it's going to begin in the way I was envisioning (better, but different) and so what I had planned may not actually work... We'll see. Like I said, though, I'd really like to get my reunion scene to be a mirror of the real one, and that I can't do until I actually SEE the real one. :D_

_So...we'll see. But keep checking back, and I may be posting more soon. This one (Deafening Silence) definitely will get updated soon._


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